Mogura Yokocho / もぐら横丁 (‘Mole Alley’, 1953)

Obscure Japanese Film #244

Shuji Sano

This Shintoho production was based on episodes from a number of autobiographical novels by Kazuo Ozaki (1899-1983), one of which gives this film its title. Ozaki is renamed Kazuo Ogata here and played by Shuji Sano. In the originals, Ozaki was writing about his life as a struggling author in the 1930s before winning the coveted Akutagawa Prize in 1937. Perhaps for budgetary reasons, director Hiroshi Shimizu chose not to recreate the period and, in one scene, Ogata’s wife (played by Yukiko Shimazaki) goes to the cinema to see the 1952 French-Italian co-production The Seven Deadly Sins. However, apart from a few minor details such as this, the film could almost be set in the 1930s as there is no mention whatsoever of the war or of issues specific to the post-war period. Instead, it focuses entirely on the problems of the young couple as they try to find ways of paying the bills and avoiding homelessness while he maintains a writing career and she becomes a mother. 

Yukiko Shimazaki

Ozaki was a respected literary author in Japan, but almost none of his work has been published in English. His mentor was the better-known Naoya Shiga, who has several works published in English, including the novel A Dark Night’s Passing and the collection The Paper Door and Other Stories. Humour and anger at injustice are said to be among the prime characteristics of Ozaki’s work, which Mishima reportedly described as being like ‘Naoya Shiga in a kimono.’ Incidentally, there have been only three other films based on his writing: Koji Shima’s Nonki megane (1940). Tadao Ikeda’s Tenmei Taro (1951) and Seiji Hisamatsu’s Aisaiki (1959), none of which are easily accessible.

Shimizu co-wrote the screenplay with Kozaburo Yoshimura, already a well-established director himself by then, and this film seems to have been their sole collaboration. Shimizu was at this point dividing his time between making his own independent pictures and working for Shintoho. Unsurprisingly for a Shimizu picture, it’s an understated piece which avoids melodrama for the most part and has very little plot but plenty of gentle humour. On the other hand, it’s not one of his most characteristic or memorable films – unlike Tomorrow will be Fine Weather in Japan, for example, which feels like it could only have been made by Shimizu. 

If leading lady Yukiko Shimazaki, who plays Ogata’s rather child-like wife, is unfamiliar, that’s perhaps a symptom of Shimizu’s lack of interest in working with big names – she was not a major star, although she had been active in films from 1950 and went on to appear in Seven Samurai. She was also a chanson singer and, in 1963, she left the film business and opened her own chanson bar in Ginza named Epoch, which she ran for many years. A more familiar face among the supporting cast is Jukichi Uno, who plays a kindly landlord and seems to have appeared in almost every shomin-geki made during this period. 

Jukichi Uno

A note on the title:

As far as I’m aware, ‘Mole Alley’ is not an official English title. While ‘alley’ seems a fair translation of yokocho (which can also be translated as ‘side street’, ‘lane’, etc), mogura can also mean ‘creepers’ or ‘trailing plants’ as well as ‘mole’. Mogura Yokocho is the name of the street that Ogata and his wife move to, but whether that street is named after moles or creepers is unclear.

Bonus trivia:

Three well-known Japanese writers are glimpsed briefly in the Akutagawa Prize ceremony scene: Fumio Niwa, Kazuo Dan, and Shiro Ozaki (no relation to Kazuo Ozaki). 

Japanese DVD to be released 13 May 2026

Thanks to A.K.

Get ‘em All / みな殺しの歌より 拳銃よさらば! / ‘Minagoroshi no uta' yori kenju-yo saraba! (From the ‘Song of Annihilation’-Farewell, Gun!) (1960)

Obscure Japanese Film #78

Hiroshi Mizuhara and Akemi Kita

 

This Toho crime flick was a vehicle for Hiroshi Mizuhara* (1935-78), a pop singer who had just become hugely popular at the time. He plays Kyosuke, a young man fresh out of prison, who goes to stay with his brother, Kozo (Akihiko Hirata, the one-eyed scientist from the original Godzilla), and his wife, Mamiko (Yukiko Shimazaki). However, it’s not long before Kozo is killed in a suspicious hit-and-run – something which fails to make much impression on Mamiko, who observes that she ‘can’t dance the mambo with a dead man’ and assumes she will simply switch brothers. Kyosuke, though, has other ideas, and begins investigating his brother’s death. 

 

Tatsuya Nakadai

 

First, he pays a visit to Kozo’s best friend, Tsubota (Tatsuya Nakadai), a crippled ex-boxer. Not wanting to shatter Kyosuke’s illusions, Tsubota decides not to tell him that Kozo was involved in a bank robbery with himself and five other men and that the loot has gone missing. Kyosuke leaves, still under the impression that Kozo was an honest citizen, but then he finds a coin locker key in his brother’s wallet. When he opens the locker, he’s surprised to find a revolver inside; later, he gets in a fight with his ex-girlfriend’s new boyfriend, Namioka (Jerry Fujio). During the scuffle, his jacket falls open, revealing the gun, and Namioka immediately backs down. Realising his new-found power, Kyosuke orders Namioka to get down on all fours and ‘squeal like a pig.’ He's delighted when Namioka does just that, and the power of the pistol goes to Kyosuke’s head as he sets about getting revenge on the men who murdered his brother. 

 

Mizuhara and Nakadai

 

The director of this film, Eizo Sugawa, had directed Tatsuya Nakadai in the excellent The Beast Must Die the previous year and had also written the script for A Dangerous Hero (1957) featuring Nakadai. I couldn’t help feeling it a pity that this third and final collaboration should be this, rather than a sequel to Beast – a film which introduced a fascinating Ripley-like antihero to Japanese cinema and left things wide open for a part two. Having said that, Get ‘em All is a well-made, entertaining and stylish noir.

 

Hiroshi Mizuhara

In my opinion, Mizuhara gives a good performance but doesn’t quite cut it as a film star. He appeared in around 20 movies (not always in the lead) but his career was harmed by his alcoholism and gambling addiction. It’s a little strange to see him in the starring role instead of Nakadai (who receives special billing), but Nakadai always relished these slightly odd parts; in fact, it’s one of a number of ‘bad leg’ roles he would play throughout his career. However, perhaps the role had another attraction for him as he had actually flirted with boxing before becoming an actor, but decided he didn’t like being punched in the face and gave it up. There’s a scene here in which he really goes at it with a punching bag and it certainly looks like he had some moves; indeed, he later got into a scrap with Kinnosuke Nakamura in real life, and I think it was Tetsuro Tanba who said that Nakadai was the best at fighting. Talking of Tanba, he’s also good here as the toughest of the gang members. 

 

Tetsuro Tanba

 

Also notable among the cast are Kurosawa favourite Seiji Miyaguchi in one of his trademark downtrodden-loser roles, and Kyoko Kishida (the Woman in the Dunes) as the girlfriend of another gang member. 

 

Seiji Miyaguchi

 

Kyoko Kishida

Get ‘em All was based on the novel Minagoroshi no uta by Haruhiko Oyabu, who had also written The Beast Must Die. In the original, the criminal gang are not bank robbers, but are involved in a black market morphine racket. While the loose adaptation here is nothing special in terms of story, director Sugawa and his screenwriter, Shuji Terayama – later an art-house director known for films such as Throw Away Your Books, Rally in the Streets – inject it with some nice touches of black humour, and emphasize the very obvious Freudian symbolism of the pistol. Indeed, there’s an implication here that Japanese men had been, in a sense, emasculated after the war by the occupying Americans; this is made most explicit when Kyosuke is nearly shot by a kid dressed as a cowboy who has got hold of his gun and claims to be… ‘Burt Lancaster’!

 * not 'Mizuwara'